1,250 fired immigrant janitors get short end of the mop

​Janitors are the kind of hard-working folks you tend not to see, toiling as they do in the background of life. So maybe it's not surprising that when 1,250 of them in Minnesota lost their jobs in October, we didn't hear much about it.

We're hearing now. John Keller, an attorney for the nonprofit Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, says the janitors were let go last month by New York based ABM Industries after Immigration and Customs Enforcement began requiring its workers to show proof they could legally work in the U.S. They couldn't, and were let go.

ABM is a 100-year-old building maintenance behemoth, boasting more than 101,000 employees and 240 offices spread across the U.S. and Canada. It says it's one of the largest such companies trading on the New York Stock Exchange, last year posted revenues of more than $3.6 billion.

Immigration and customs officials have not commented on the case. Keller told The Associated Press he doesn't think any of the laid off workers have been deported.